Guild Wars 2

NCsoft bought ANet years before GW1 came out.

Did ANet have anything out before NCsoft bought them in 2002? I don’t think so.

New land. NEW LAND!

Ah yes, NCsoft and CCs. There were lots of problems in CoH as well with monthly limits and number of purchases in a single day. Not with every card or every player just enough that many found NCsoft’s online store annoying as heck.

Well Aion is a much older game and if NCSoft’s quarterly reports are right, has had a shrinking population of players recently. Which would be another reason to do such a program especially since it went from subscription to F2P with cash shop. Then again wasn’t Aion player data hacked early on?

“What is wrong with Orr?”

Well if violently sank, spent around 150 years at the bottom of the sea before violently raised back to the surface. Not to mention the smell of dead sea life.

The fact it’s full of undead doesn’t help making it a popular vacation destination either.

raptor.1064:

my favorite things are the tooltips they haven’t bothered updating for months for no reason, really how hard is it to change just the text “10% faster” to “25% faster”?

Because if at some point the devs decided to change those numbers, people had hard numbers to compare them to. As it is any change would still be “faster” and “much faster” even if they dropped them to 5% and 12.5% from 10% and 25%.

Dasorine.1964:

forum have a limit that you can’t post a reply thats shorter than 15 characters, so just “No.” would not be allowed to be posted so to meet the requirements rather than just spamming any letters people use a variant of 15 characters.

I guess not. CoH’s forums prevented posts that were all caps, it’s why I was asking.

IS THERE AN ALL CAPS FILTER AS WELL?

I’m assuming you are having a problem finding Gem Cards in your local retailer and/or that you are a cash Vs plastic consumer (or simply rather not enter their CC/DC number in a game).

Now I can see a “sale” on Gems for those buying online, 1) it’s easy to implement and 2) Anet is getting all the money from the sale as oppose to Gem Cards where the retailer and POSA service gets a cut.

And that’s the problem with offering deals on Gem Cards, ANet is already “losing” (as in not getting it all) money on that card. So it becomes a question of is ANet losing retail partners willing to carry the Gem cards and/or how much of the buying Gems for real money business is from Gem cards.

If the cards sell well enough, they don’t take up a lot of shelf or warehouse space, and the retailer’s cut if sufficient, I don’t see how they would be losing retail partners. Without that, a drop in retailers carrying the cards, I don’t see a reason they would want to boost the overall sales, from the retailer’s perspective, by bundling in goodies.

Now if there was a decline in bought Gems and the decline is significantly more prevalent to Gems from cards Vs direct purchase then maybe it’ll be something they would be willing to pursue.

But EVE centers around massive corporations and their resources, of course the market place there deals with massive movement of goods and is designed to handle it.

I agree, thank you. We need players who have the means to test and collect data on drop/salvage rates to have a better grasp on how things work.

Charismatic Harm.9683:

Ursan.7846:

Pandemoniac.4739:

I get that part – the listing fee puts downward pressure on the sale prices, but if you’re filling a buy order, why would you need the listing fee up front instead of just deducting it from the sale?

When you’re filling a buy order, there is differentiation between “up front” and “after the fact” since the transaction happens immediately.

I don’t know if that differentiation needs to be in place when filling a buy order though.

If you find something valuable, but don’t have the 5% to list it for sale, you should be able to elect to have 15% taken out of the total sale price by filling the buy order.

It ends up being the same percentage, except it’s 15% applied to the back end when filling a buy order instead of 5% up front and 10% on the back end when placing a sell listing.

Then what prevents you from listing, pulling, listing again if you could elect to postpone the 5% posting fee until the sale.

This goes back to the arguments about rebating the posting fee if you pull your item (which I oppose).

Official Guild Wars 2 Wiki is your friend

Lambent.6375:

Hi, I went to WvW for the first time to kill some skriit for heavy bags of skritt shinies, but the spawn was very poor, even during the kill 30 skritt event I had to run all over the scratch just to fine one.

Is the spawn dependent on how well your server is doing in WvW? I was in the borderlands of my home server, so maybe it’s higher in the eternal battlegrounds?

When I soloed that area it really to earn the skill point it really was … one…at…a…time.

I just did a quick scan of MMO sites I read and I didn’t see this wave of negative articles you claim OP.

Since it’ll cost you the same listing fee if the item sells or you decided to pull it before it sells, it makes the listing fee is therefore moot.

It’ the projected profit due solely due to the sale, which is selling price – 10%.

Another way to look at it is lets say you include the listing fee into the profit equation. Works fine as long as you didn’t remove the item from sale at some point and relist it at a different price. Then at that point your profit on the item is the sale price – 15% – 5% of the previous sale price – 5% of the previous, previous sale price, etc. That would be tougher to track per item just to show your “true profit”. Much easier just to show you what will be deposited at the TP in your name after the sale and then up to you to keep track of any miscellaneous costs.

Ursan.7846:

Thraxas.6354:

What goes In = What comes Out + Accumulation

As a Chemical Engineer, this post made me nerdgasm.

Then as a CE you strongly believe 2+2=5 for very large values of two.

A CE study group I knew back in college (early 1980s) had t-shirts made with that phrase.

winterlove.6834:

IS THE mfsk A TAD BETTER THEN THE MASTER KIT BYE CHANCE ? EVEN A LITTLE

Behellagh.1468:

… just like a Master kit …

The dailies aren’t a time gate. One of the rewards given for doing the daily acts as a time gate. If the reward is available elsewhere this thread would be moot.

The complaint isn’t really the dailies. It’s the fact that laurels are only available from dailies. If it was only available in dungeon chests the conversation would be about that. But this brings the whole question about grinding to the foreground. Those who are upset want to get laurels from some task that they can run as many times a day as they want.

The problem with that is right now the devs solution to eliminate the sense of “grinding” is to limit major rewards from events to one a day.

You craft it at the MF. It’s account bound. It’s not cheap. It’s just like a Master kit but with 250 uses instead of 25. I’m pretty sure it’s currently not cheaper than 10 Master kits. The recipe and list of needed components are on the wiki. Search for Mystic Salvage Kit. I think the entry on Mystic Forge will also list the recipe.

CoH had uncontrolled inflation.

You see to craft something rare you had to get it’s recipe or required components, at least one that is classified as rare. So you had to farm critters, a lot of critters, because the chance any one of them would drop what you wanted was, well, rare (and they meant rare in that game). Side effect is even if you haven’t found everything you were looking for, you now have a huge pile of game currency since every critter will give you some. And the thing is, you are looking for a lot of rare recipes, each with at least one rare crafting component required.

So farming for drops you will end up stinking rich even if you didn’t get everything you were looking for. That’s OK, there’s a consignment house where you can by from other players, a lot who want the same item and they are also stinking rich so whoever has the most game currency gets one when one is put up for sale. Sooo, players started to farm also for game currency, selling drops they didn’t want (we had a very limited inventory system, you really couldn’t hoard without losing drops).

The only real currency sink was the sales tax and it simply wasn’t enough. Lots of players capped out their bank at 2 billion and came up with unique ways to save more. The real valuable loot were routinely traded outside of the consignment house because the going rate was over 2 billion.

It was pretty ridiculous toward the end. I crafted 20 of a popular item every day before logging off, I placed orders for the raw materials for next night and put the items up for sale at 10x my crafting cost. They always sold out in under 24 hours. And I was a green horn novice compared to the market savvy players.

In game inflation is a very, very bad thing if it’s not kept in control by some means. Buying from merchants, repairing armor and the TP tax are the only way to “destroy” gold directly in this game. I guess destroying items in a chance to upgrade them in the Mystic Slot Machine also destroys wealth, at least indirectly. Salvaging might as well given a big enough sample size.

Revolution.6301:

I found a neat video that is the core reason many of us are annoyed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=davb_vgQ0BQ
You know why advertise the game that way? Was it just to get to buy a game that simply is not that video?

Personally I’m annoyed that developers have ignored this question, why the change? This is not fair nor is the product we bought. In many ways this is false advertising.

For example: Villages remember you. Oh so they do? When? Where? How do I know they’ve ‘remembered’ me? They don’t talk, they don’t even say Hi. I feel like a stranger walking to one that I’ve ‘saved’ countless times.

I’ve kept hearing about this video and how this shows how the devs have betrayed us. I see no such thing. As for your example, about remembering, I believe that’s in reference to the heart givers whose remember you’ve helped them (thus finishing the heart) and turning into a karma vendor/merchant (I know you, here’s some stuff I’m now willing to sell you).

They defined grind in reference to other MMOs as … “and the rest of the game is this boring grind to get to the fun stuff” (starts around the 1:25 mark). Since there is many ways to earn XP in this game and no fixed quest chain, it’s entirely up to you to pick what’s fun for you as a way to level up. You like quest chains, we got quest chains, look for hearts. You like crafting, hey you can earn XP crafting. You like exploring every nook and cranny in the zone, look XP for exploring, opening up new areas, traveling to POI and Vistas (and unlocking Asura gates to speed traveling back there again). You like a team challenge, tada, Dungeons with multiple paths. Like to help others, XP for rezzing fallen players and NPCs and no penalty to others if you join in on their battle.

Somehow players have gotten it into their heads that one line in that video refers to more than simple gameplay.

It’s called a gold sink.

Syeria.4812:

Behellagh.1468:

Syeria.4812:

This sounds nice and impressive to skeptics, but fortunately for stats, it actually doesn’t matter if there’s 1 “roll,” 2 “rolls,” or 300 “rolls.” The math works out exactly the same. If a black lion kit has a 70% chance to produce ectos (note, I’m not just making up numbers, although I am aggressively rounding) but produces them in this distribution 1 @ 50%, 2 @ 25%, 3 @ 25%, that’s exactly statistically the same as producing an average of 1.225 ectos per salvage. The only effect of the different distribution is a higher standard deviation, which may force a very slightly larger sample size requirement.

As to your concern about a sample size of 200, if he had 400 for the sample size, you’d be demanding 800. If he had 800 you’d be demanding 1600. If he had 1600 you’d be demanding 3200. If you’re actually concerned about the sample size, do the math yourself and show us that the sample is statistically insufficient. If you can’t do that math (estimate the values you don’t know, but tell us your estimates and why) then I’m afraid you’re not qualified to criticize the sample size.

If you are trying to determine the probability of an unknown system more samples are always better since, as you point out, it conforms better to the theoretical standard distribution (assuming our understanding of the mechanism behind it is correct). More samples simply improve the odds that the mean we see is accurate.

Lets go back to the old mainstay of probability, the coin flip (or a die roll). If I flip a coin 10 times and get 7 heads it would be incorrect for me to assume that there’s a 70% chance for heads. If I flip a coin 100 times the result should be closer to 50% and 1000 flips should be closer still. Except we know that there should be a 50% chance with a coin or a 1/6th chance with a die. Here we are blind to what we should be seeing so we don’t know how accurate our results are since we don’t have a base line to test it against.

There is probably a way to do it, I’m sure a math or science major could pop in and school me on my 30 year old knowledge of one prop and stat course I took in college.

That’s a false equivalency though. We’re not saying we’ve looked at 10 salvages and decided a rate based on it. We’re trying to determine two things: are Black Lion kits better than Masters/Mystic, and what are the rates. For the former, the proper analogy is that we’ve done 200 six-sided die rolls and 200 coin flips. We’ve determined from this that coin flips are more likely to produce a single given outcome than a dice roll.

On top of that, you’re trying to frame things very poorly. You’ve apparently decided that a 99.9999999% accuracy with a confidence interval of +/- 0.00000000001 is the only acceptable result. No one would ever actually want or expect that from this analysis. If we accept a reasonable confidence interval of say +/- 0.1 at 95% confidence, the required sample size is going to be relatively tiny. Required sample sizes are always way smaller than people expect.

If you’re going to claim the sample is too small, you’d better actually do the math to determine that fact. The OP probably should provide that math himself, but really he hasn’t claimed the sample is sufficient either. If you want to disprove his data, the onus is on you. Just shouting “you need more data” isn’t enough unless you can actually mathematically show that more data is needed.

Where do you think I’m asking for 99.999999999% confidence? All I’m was saying is more is better. We had 200 of each before, now we have 400 of each. Confidence is improved, end of story.

Understanding the mechanism behind it however could help to determine if it gets accidentally broken or intentionally changed. But when attempting to model an unknown random event, more samples simply provides more clues to the underlying mechanic.

I guess not everyone took a clock apart to see how it worked as a kid.

Syeria.4812:

This sounds nice and impressive to skeptics, but fortunately for stats, it actually doesn’t matter if there’s 1 “roll,” 2 “rolls,” or 300 “rolls.” The math works out exactly the same. If a black lion kit has a 70% chance to produce ectos (note, I’m not just making up numbers, although I am aggressively rounding) but produces them in this distribution 1 @ 50%, 2 @ 25%, 3 @ 25%, that’s exactly statistically the same as producing an average of 1.225 ectos per salvage. The only effect of the different distribution is a higher standard deviation, which may force a very slightly larger sample size requirement.

As to your concern about a sample size of 200, if he had 400 for the sample size, you’d be demanding 800. If he had 800 you’d be demanding 1600. If he had 1600 you’d be demanding 3200. If you’re actually concerned about the sample size, do the math yourself and show us that the sample is statistically insufficient. If you can’t do that math (estimate the values you don’t know, but tell us your estimates and why) then I’m afraid you’re not qualified to criticize the sample size.

If you are trying to determine the probability of an unknown system more samples are always better since, as you point out, it conforms better to the theoretical standard distribution (assuming our understanding of the mechanism behind it is correct). More samples simply improve the odds that the mean we see is accurate.

Lets go back to the old mainstay of probability, the coin flip (or a die roll). If I flip a coin 10 times and get 7 heads it would be incorrect for me to assume that there’s a 70% chance for heads. If I flip a coin 100 times the result should be closer to 50% and 1000 flips should be closer still. Except we know that there should be a 50% chance with a coin or a 1/6th chance with a die. Here we are blind to what we should be seeing so we don’t know how accurate our results are since we don’t have a base line to test it against.

There is probably a way to do it, I’m sure a math or science major could pop in and school me on my 30 year old knowledge of one prop and stat course I took in college.

I’ve always seen players who are secretly or unconsciously a cost accountant, constantly weighing the return on investment (ROI) of every activity in an MMO.

Crafting is broken because ROI is poor (due to cost to learn, cost of raw materials).

Player Trading is broken because ROI is poor (market fees, irrational players).

Major quests are broken because ROI is poor (time/difficulty Vs loot).

So they gravitate to the few activities that meet their internal sense of a good ROI and then fret about how the game is to grindy and how other aspects are poorly designed in their opinion.

Lets not talk about what happens if devs adjust activities with significantly higher ROI downwards (or low upwards) and how that’s an example of the devs imposing their (the devs) playstyle on them (the cost accountants).

Argos Soft’s Armor Gallery

Select sex/weight?/race/color (I use black/white) and browse. If you see something you like click on it and it’ll list all the parts and what they are called. Then search the wiki to see who offers it, assuming it’s not common or craftable.

This was so last week, or month. There’s at least a couple of threads about this on the forum with dev comments.

Well for a small % chance rolls, 200 samples may or may not be enough to infer drop rate with any degree of accuracy. That’s simple Prop and Stats 101.

400 is more helpful. And we may be dealing with two rolls for ectos. First if we get any and second how many within a range. Also the chances within the range may not be the same (ie 70% – 1 30% – 2). The actual mechanic is difficult to surmise only using the results of approx 1.25 for BL and 0.9 for Master/Mystic.

But this does appear to support the claim that BL kits aren’t worth it for just ectos as 0.35 ectos is worth at current sell price around 9s 23c while the difference is use between the two kits is 23s and change (100 Gems@1g98s).

Day Trooper.3605:

Regarding my memory (4gb), in task manager I can see it hitting 80+% routinely while playing GW2. As it’s not hitting 100% though, does this still explain intermittent choppiness?

Also, if I did have more RAM, would this in any way reduce CPU usage?

Usually adding more RAM won’t affect CPU usage at all. If anything if the game is paging to disk to run, adding more memory would probably increase CPU usage in the game.

One way to reduce CPU usage is to use the frame rate limiter on the graphics options. For instance if routinely get above 60fps, setting it to limit it to 30 would reduce CPU usage since it doesn’t need to crank out frames as fast as possible. The only other time I’ve seen CPU usage low in a game is when you have settings set too high. CPU ends up waiting on the video card.

Choppiness could be explained by having the graphic settings too high or low performance from your drives. The game has 15GB of data and less than 2GB to use. So the game is loading data off the hard drive while playing as well as loading data onto the video card continuously (depending on the amount of memory on your video card, resolution, driver AA settings, etc). It’s not something you can easily finger as to why you encounter chop.

I don’t know about farming it, I got it simply by helping refugees in Wayfarer Foothills. Fixing signs, healing wounded/reviving refugees, lighting campfires, returning stuff from fallen refugee bodies that are around the area.

Pirlipat.2479:

Orion the Cursed.1206:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/03/07/how-guild-wars-2-plans-to-survive

“If other games don’t have that carrot or that thing that makes players log back in it’s really dangerous for them because they can’t get that monthly fee. We don’t have that. Instead, our motivation has to be provide players with such an amazing experience in the game that they want to keep playing it.

“That’s the only motivation we’ve got.”

cough because jumping 15 times away from a mob without any need or consuming like 25 times food while your buffood is lasting for half an hour is such an incredibly amazing experience.

Really do you know ONE single person who is doing the dailies for the sake of the dailie and not for the laurel it rewards? Would anyone of you do the dailies if they rewarded nothing?

I don’t go out of my way to do the dailies or monthlies (I’ve never gotten a monthly but I probably get this one). I simply play the game and around 1/2 hour before I plan to log off for the night I check the status of the dailies, if I hadn’t gotten it yet. Usually I have 3 or 4 of the 9 completed with several other partially done. If it’s convenient I will then and only then go out of my way to knock them out to get the reward. It could be as simple as visit a Laurel merchant, I usually log off in a city so that isn’t out of my way, or craft 10 things (look, boards) and since I’m in a city anyways visiting a crafting station isn’t a big thing either.

The grindiest one for me is underwater kills. Even though I kill them rather quickly (look 10+ stacks of bleed) I normally don’t travel the world underwater.

Sarrs.4831:

Red Falcon.8257:

Name one way that would make everyone happy.
You know what? There isn’t.
People will continue to deem “forced” and “grindy” everything and the opposite of everything.

OH OH OH

You don’t implement “ONE WAY” to make everyone happy. You have several ways! That way Mister Dungeons can play and get Ascended gear in his dungeons and be happy, and Mister Fractals can play and get Ascended gear from his fractals and be happy, and Mister Wuvwuv can play and get Ascended gear from his wuvwuv and be happy!

Everybody’s happy!

You beat me to it, I had the same suggestion. However I feel there will still be a few who find something to dislike about the multiple options provided. And they will be vocal about it on the forums just as day follows night.

You will have to acquire the Charr recipes in Diessa Plateau for a bit of Karma. The link will tell you which ones from whom.

It’s Level 80 medium cultural armor as far as I can figure out. I believe it’s called trapper.

The studio is in America, good probably the servers (including the EU ones) are too. I think daily reset at 0Z is a rather surprising decision. I would have expected 5/6am Pacific coast time when few are playing in America. For once the rest of the world isn’t messed over just because the game was developed in the US of A.

critickitten.1498:

Would you like to explain why they should have to submit themselves to a boring grind for it? Why the pursuit of the best gear can’t be both challenging and enjoyable?

What’s your alternate? If ascended gear with it’s agony resistance is really meant for Fractals only then why not just put it there? Grind Fractals for ascended loot? No that’s boring grind. Or should you be able to walk in with one of the existing currencies, Karma/Gold and buy them all day one if you can afford it? But that requires you to play PvE or WvW a lot or “Buy to Win” converting bought Gems to gold.

critickitten.1498:

So why do you bother decking your character out in exotic gear?

Because the Temple was open, I had a pile of Karma and it was better than the level 80 blues I’ve been using (okay I had one gold from a laurel armor chest).

vespers.1759:

alright np. i really hope the wvwvw patch addresses the problems with classes and not just culling.

Please, please don’t mess with the classes so they work differently in PvP/WvW than PvE. I’m not willing to sacrifice playing in the open world just to play WvW only or vice versa.

They tried that in City of Heroes, in the name of balance and you had to choose setting up your character for PvE or PvP because what worked well in one domain simply didn’t in the other. They eventually gave us the ability to have two configurations for our character and a means to select one versus the other but it came after the last PvP patched which devastated the PvP community, leaving a mere shadow of what it once was.

While I can’t play PvP well at all, one on one, WvW lets me be part of a group where my lack of lightning fast reflexes or superior hardware/gaming controls still lets me participate in it. Also some of the goals are easier to achieve for someone with my lack of skills. I can take out a single vet guard at a crossroad myself. I and one other can easily take control of a supply camp guarded by vet npcs. I can contribute to my world’s score without being a BiS/Redbull fueled twitch monkey .

vespers.1759:

Behellagh.1468:

vespers.1759:

vespers.1759:

some of us enjoy being relevant, and we have a right to protest things we dislike instead of just bailing like you do when you dislike stuff. see that’s how the world works. if nobody ever tried to improve anything i suppose humans would be extinct by now

you clearly didn’t understand my post at all. go re-read it again.

No I’m pretty sure I read that right. You indicated that players who aren’t using BiS ascended gear are irrelevant and there are some of us who disagree with that attitude.

Also the suggestion that since we don’t feel as strongly to get BiS gear is equivalent to not having the desire to strive for improvement. But it’s improvement just for the sake of improvement, when it doesn’t and wouldn’t affect our gameplay since we aren’t interested in Fractal runs or uber-competitive PvP/WvW. But calling us irrelevant is, well insulting.

So again, I’m pretty sure I read that right.

nope you still haven’t got it.

Well the suggestion forum is somewhere around here. You’ve made some strong arguments that it’s unfair so why don’t you come up with some suggestions to fix the problem, other than making Laurels fall like rain.

The thread is called “Stop Time Sinks / Dailies”. It should have been called “Laurels are Unfair to Players who want Ascended Gear Now”.

Yea, EDT now not EST.

vespers.1759:

vespers.1759:

some of us enjoy being relevant, and we have a right to protest things we dislike instead of just bailing like you do when you dislike stuff. see that’s how the world works. if nobody ever tried to improve anything i suppose humans would be extinct by now

you clearly didn’t understand my post at all. go re-read it again.

No I’m pretty sure I read that right. You indicated that players who aren’t using BiS ascended gear are irrelevant and there are some of us who disagree with that attitude.

Also the suggestion that since we don’t feel as strongly to get BiS gear is equivalent to not having the desire to strive for improvement. But it’s improvement just for the sake of improvement, when it doesn’t and wouldn’t affect our gameplay since we aren’t interested in Fractal runs or uber-competitive PvP/WvW. But calling us irrelevant is, well insulting.

So again, I’m pretty sure I read that right.

vespers.1759:

some of us enjoy being relevant, and we have a right to protest things we dislike instead of just bailing like you do when you dislike stuff. see that’s how the world works. if nobody ever tried to improve anything i suppose humans would be extinct by now

So you are comparing your motivation to get “the best” gear in a GAME easily or at least not time gated to what had driven the collective advancement of mankind since the dawn of civilization?

“And when everyone’s super… no one will be.” – Syndrome

BiS should take time and effort to achieve. Your complaint is it’ll take too long due to the gating of Laurels to daily and monthly rewards. Maybe you’re right on that point but declaring that if players aren’t playing with BiS gear or aren’t also striving to acquire it then they’re not playing the game right is … well … wrong headed thinking (not directed at you Vespers, some of the others on your side of the discussion).

It’s you dictating your gaming values on the rest of a player base in a game that has significantly reduced the annoyance found in the major MMOs currently out there.

Jski.6180:

Behellagh.1468:

So you only NEED it in higher level fractals and PvP. Well since I don’t do either, well I do WvW but I don’t treat it as “serious business”.

So carry on, it’ll give me something to read while working.

Why would you need it for WvW? If your on your own you already failed at wvw. If your in a group your gear dose not mean much boons do.

You sort of missed the point of me not treating WvW as “serious business”. I find it enjoyable but I go in fully realizing I’m going to lose 99% of the time in a one on one situation. That’s because 1) I’ve never been good at any PvP content in any game on any system (other than camping and sniping but that normally doesn’t last long), I simply don’t have lighting fast reflexes or coordination to do well at it; and 2) it was X on one. Pretty sure that ascended gear wouldn’t help in either situation.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Behellagh.1468:

Dailies give me 4500 Karma, one Mystic Coin (which I’ve not used any yet since I don’t know what they are for or where I can use them),

Mystic Coins are used in special recipes at the Mystic Forge. Generally you can make unique exotic weapons with them. Look on the Wiki for “Mystic Weapons”.

They also are an integral part of getting Legendary pieces.

Yes, I know that now but the game simply flings it at you with no explanation why it’s a reward. And I didn’t know where or what the Mystic Forge was, I just thought it was a fountain when I wandered past it in Lyon’s Arch for three months as I ran from the TP to the bank (maybe because it didn’t look like a forge). I always attributed the crowd ats the location because it was just a good common meeting place.

I don’t need floating exclamation points but send a letter telling me where to find someone to talk to to learn these things would be nice, at least the first time you roll a character or encounter some new currency or account bound item that isn’t obvious what it’s good for.

The wiki is only so useful. Click on laurel for instance and they will only tell you about the laurel merchants in the cities. So it’s no surprising that someone like me who haven’t done any Fractals in the three months I’ve been here wouldn’t know of their use there.

Where are dungeons mandatory because I haven’t needed to do any yet?

Why does it matter if Karma is primarily used for Orr armor or Cultural weapon(skin)s?

Dailies give me 4500 Karma, one Mystic Coin (which I’ve not used any yet since I don’t know what they are for or where I can use them), one Laurel and a bit of money (I think never really pay that much attention to it). I don’t consider any of those items SO “must have” to alter my play style for the day. I got my daily today/yesterday in the middle of a castle raid in WvW. I often get them in an dynamic event I joined simply because I’m passing by. I gather, because it’s along my way. I kill things, because they are along/in my way. Since I travel though multiple regions I end up killing a variety of things. I occasionally craft because I someday I really would like to be able to craft my own weapons someday. I salvage and sell to the TP because I believe a well supplied TP benefits all.

As for ubering up every character, show me a game where you can do that without putting in the time or paying actual money on each of your characters?

Nurse.1085:

awe extender.1908:

Srsly, why do ppl complain so much about the dailies or monthly???

Nobody forces you to do it! If you dont like to do it just dont!

And btw, I get my dailies without thinking about doing them. Today I did one run of fractals plus JP in EB and voila, the daily was done! And I did those 2 instances cause I enjoy it. NOT because of getting the daily.

Enjoy your game, the rest will follow :-)

I’m sorry but I find the line “you don’t have to do them” an incredibly weak argument.

If you want end game gear, you have to do them. Anet wants you to do them and they encourage you to do them by taunting you with pretty shiny things that make your character stronger.

I am in no way saying Dailies are hard. I’m saying the gated time sinks / dailies is a horrible way to earn your end game gear.

I mean, do you really think Dailies is the best way to earn your end game gear? Yes/No?

What “end game gear” is so awesome that you are willing to spend a ton of time to earn it? How is it SO much better than the Karma gear from Orr? What content needs it? Why is that content SO much better than the rest of the game? Is it a case of “I need gear X to do content Y just to get more gear X to do more content Y”. You likely aren’t leveling anymore, you probably have all exotic armor and weapons already.

Why the need? I never understood why players NEED to min/max every character with the most exclusive loot in the game because the stats are a fractional % better than what you already have. WHY?

etiolate.9185:

Behellagh.1468:

MMOs have time sinks/gated content and will always have time sinks/gated content because unlike single player games, their income relies on players hanging around. Some have monthly subscriptions, and item shop or both but they rely on having an active population spending real money to keep the servers up, the content fresh and the bugs patched.

Complaining about them is like complaining you have to dribble the ball in basketball or that you can’t use your hands in football/soccer.

I don’t really see why a non-sub MMO like GW2 needs gated content and artificial time extenders. Those are elements born of needign people to keep subbing. GW2 doesn’t need that. This game relies off of Gem sales and Box sales, neither of which rely on constant logging in. I realize online worlds need people, but the game has people playing it. That’s not an issue.

In the end, this shift to behavior manipulation leaves me perplexed.

But they need to keep players playing. An item shop source of income is dependent on a large active player population because they only need minority of those players to buy the proxy currency to use in the shop. A large active player population is also attractive to other players because MMOs simply aren’t as much fun if you can’t play with others while an empty MMO simply won’t retain new players for very long as they wander an empty world (last man on Earth syndrome).

I saw laurels as simply another currency reward for dailies and monthlies. The carrot if you are willing to play a half an hour to an hour a day to earn them. A way to steer players back into zones long since abandoned once the player out leveled them (which isn’t needed due to their auto level adjust system). A way to keep the population active because a world full of players everywhere is better than one that’s not.

Now since I’ve never played any of the FotM content, I had no idea that laurels are also spent there, I’ve been using them to buy random armor and dyes or saving up for a mini-pet.

I’m sure lots of other new players who play the PvE content have yet to do Fractals or even know what that means unless they are dragged into them via PUGs or guilds. It’s not like the game tells you what they are or how to get there in any straightforward manner (along with what any of the dungeon or PvP currencies are good for).

Now since I’ve only played “themepark” MMOs this doesn’t seem out of the ordinary and is totally expected and acceptable. The only non-“themepark” MMO I can think of is EVE and I certainly don’t want to see a sword and sorcery version of that because I’m not interested in being either a mere insignificant player in worlds ruled by those who can play a hell of a lot more than me or where open PvP is as common as the cold.

This game wasn’t advertised or reviewed, at least as how saw it, as an open world but one where a lot of the older conventions have been replaced with less restrictive ones, not eliminated. So yes, you’re all crying me a river because the game doesn’t reward those who can devote substantially more time to it than the slightly above average active player.

We should be playing because we enjoy the playing, not because we are getting an hourly “wage” for playing.

Back during winterfest those screaming little dolls. If they popped out of a present I learned to simply run away. I had no problems with any of the others but my mesmer simply couldn’t kill them before they killed me.

I’m having crappy luck (darn RNG :p) getting ectos out of rares (or runes even) using Master’s Kit so I sell rares and yes, the prices have dropped a bit from the 30s range to the 20s range.